You Make Your Path by Walking: Navigating the Healing Journey After Loss | Suzanne Anderson

00:00
Anyway, I had this beautiful vessel that David was a collector of rare Asian ceramics. And this one was one of those beautiful vessels. And at a certain point, right at the beginning, I had a friend of mine who does the shamanic rattles, if you've ever heard those. These intense rattling. And she rattled, rattled, rattled. And it was when it sort of hit the peak moment, I took this vessel and I just smashed it on the stone hearth.

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and it went into just a bajillion pieces. And the whole room went, and my body did. It was like the message to my body, and I think others felt this too, that there would be no putting back together this thing. Like for me, there was no where I was going. There was no there there to go back to. And the more that I could really,

00:59
accept that and that was a critical moment for me of really getting it in my body, then I could, this was my life. I wasn't going to get this moment back or this day back. They're gone. So how can I live this with the hope that if I live it so fully, heartfully, all of me, that I might find myself somewhere beautiful again.

01:30
Today's episode is with my new friend, Suzanne Anderson. Suzanne is a psychologist and academic who's dedicated her life's work to researching women's development. She's also an author of two books on women's empowerment and leadership. In this episode, Suzanne opens up about her personal journey through grief after the suicide of her husband David. It's a deeply emotional topic, but Suzanne shares her experience in a way that's both brave and hopeful. She talks about the challenges of losing a partner, the financial struggles that followed,

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and the difficulty of letting go of a home filled with memories. Despite everything, Suzanne found the strength to carry on and shares her insights on how she was able to do so. This conversation is a powerful reminder that no matter what life throws at us, there's always a way forward. So before we start, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude for our Patreon supporters, Brian and Sari, for sponsoring one episode a month. Their support helps cover production costs and keep the show going.

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I'd also like to thank Dream Vacations, a travel agency owned by some of my friends, for sponsoring an episode of the show each month. They offer some amazing deals for their clients, so be sure to check out Trapper and Shane at the link in the show notes, or follow them on Instagram and Facebook at YourVacationHeroes. I hope this conversation resonates with you as much as it did with me. I'm Maciel Houli, and this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives for ev-

03:02
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with a brand new connection. Hey, Suzanne. Hey, Matt. Good to be here. It's nice to have you on. I know you probably know this because you filled out the little form, but as a reminder to the audience, I don't like to know too much about my guest story. I guess I go against the podcasting grain where everyone spends all day researching and getting these questions together.

03:31
My goal with this is really to truly have an unraveling human conversation. And so I know a little bit about your story. And I know kind of what your pivotal moment is. But I appreciate you willing to come to this venue, if you will, to have a conversation with me and allow me to ask the questions that I would want any human to ask in a conversation like this. What I love for my guests to do, to kind of just set the scene and go ahead and do is to just kind of

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give us an idea of what life was like for Suzanne. You can obviously start and just tell us a little bit about who you are, but give us or paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to this pivotal moment that really changed the entire trajectory of your life. Well, that's good. That's good. We'll sort of get ourselves set for the moment that the, though sometimes I talk about it like the iceberg cleaving away and standing on the edge of a very

04:27
huge void. My life was doing the work I love to do that I'm still doing today, which at that time was deeply into the research of women and development and how women can actually awaken to what we call the next level of capacity when they bring together their feminine and masculine essences to use a short form. And I was running programs in universities and doing the research to

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kind of figured this out, working with lots of women. And along with lots of, well, several different faculty and then one co-author, we figured some things out and written a book. That was the kind of culmination of over maybe 15 years of work. I was actually a leadership consultant before that, management consultant in that space, kind of the space that there actually weren't very many women in, mostly men. Big shop. And discovered that the, yeah.

05:25
Well, especially in the 90s, that's how it was. The few women that were in that space were really suffering and that sent me into wanting to understand what was happening in these years of research. I was really full of the excitement of what we discovered. Spent a year writing a book, stopped running the programs we were running. That's on the professional level, just to represent. There's sort of a momentum. There was momentum, like I'm going up and out.

05:52
I'm going to share these ideas. It's a takeoff moment in my life. 15 years of putting in work is a ramp for sure. It's a big ramp. Yep. On the personal level, I had met my beloved husband, who's actually my second husband, but in many ways I felt like he was the person I was spending my life making my way toward. And I write about that in this second book.

06:21
And we were in the, I just thought, I actually, I really felt like I'd landed home in a certain sense. Like I hadn't since my family of origin or my mother. I felt I had a real connection with my mother. She also died quite young. And David and I were just, it was a beautiful partnership. We had an incredible property on an island in the Pacific Northwest. David had brought

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these incredible antique Indonesian buildings over from Java. He ran an Indonesian antique business here in Seattle, had a workshop in Java, and he would dismantle these amazing antique houses in Java, kind of number them all like Lego, bring them over in containers, bring over Indonesian carpenters and put them up. And so our property, well, it was initially his and then I came into that.

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was magical, otherworldly, truly otherworldly. But David was more the collector, quite an introvert, charming introvert actually, but he liked his alone time. And I would say, people used to say when I came into his life, like, I brought the soft furniture and the pillows and the good lighting and, you know, all I would say sort of the feminine things. And then we just really did all these amazing things with the property to host.

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Buddhist retreats and music events, and it was just this dynamic and gorgeous place. Now that was all happening. And then David's niece, who was his sister's daughter, and the son of his best friend in Indonesia who had helped him set up his business there, had met through David at his store in Seattle and were getting married like three days later. Three days later from this cataclysmic event we're going to talk about.

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So just to represent, I felt I was in this, really I felt so blessed. It was a magical life and many exciting things coming with my book, the launch of a new program, five days later from this event, the wedding. Everything was kind of like coming to this place where you felt really comfortable. You said that you felt at home. Did you, before?

08:47
kind of going through this professional journey and going through meeting David and kind of creating that life together, were there parts in which you felt like you were always searching? Or, and then this was like this new phase where everything was kind of aligning? Do you know, I was married to my first husband before that I'd met when I lived in Europe. And...

09:15
I did feel, okay, here is my partner, his name. I'd had this thing since I was a child that I was going to meet a David. And I don't know why. I don't know where it came from. But I have this. It was like really young. I used to just think any boy at the school named David, that was going to be the guy. That's what you wrote in your notebook? Yeah. I have this thing. I don't know. Yeah, totally. It was very strange. But anyway, Robert's dad's name, that was my first husband, was named.

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David. So I thought, oh, okay, well, that's close enough. This must be the guy. But honestly, I don't know if I felt, I wasn't aware of not feeling that I didn't belong fully until I really did with David, this feeling of that's the best I can say, because I would say I had a very interesting life. I lived all over the world and did all these very exciting and adventurous things. And I would say...

10:13
I felt like a sort of planetary citizen at home in the world exploring. But with the person, there was this other level of home I felt with David. Yeah. And you did, it's like one of those things that you don't know until you know, I'm assuming. I talked to a lot of people about this and I wonder if it resonates with you of how I think a lot of us have been conditioned over the years that, you know, there's a societal checklist of things that you need to accomplish.

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Did you have any of that growing up in which there were check marks or were you more worldly, like you said, like a planetary citizen? Did you feel like you had to do whatever the world was telling you you had to do next? No. But I would say it was a little complicated because I did have... I'm jealous. Well, but I'm going to explain because I think you can be just as constrained if you're rebelling against something.

11:12
right, because you're reacting to the thing. So I'd say there was a very deep connection I had with my father growing up, and I wanted his attention and his love and his noticing of me. And he was in the scientific world and in a world, university world himself, an academic and a university president, and that was his world. And I was having other kinds of experiences that were not the scientific worldview. I was...

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very much in my heart. I was already having spiritual experiences, I'd say quite young, but I had no spiritual container for that, or even we weren't religious at all as a family, but I was just feeling connected to things in the world and ways that I couldn't understand then. I really, in a certain way, pushed away from my father, and you know, I won't be like that. I'm going to go, I'm going to be...

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I care about the world. I feel like I already felt quite young that there was something happening in the world and that I should be a part of it as a kind of change agent. I organized conferences called the Planetary Initiative Conferences with people, and I lived in spiritual communities and learned how to farm, went to kibbutz in Israel. I was really interested in alternative ways of being. But in a certain way…

12:39
Inside, I always felt like I was pushing away from something. And it wasn't until, for example, my mother said when I was younger, you're such a good teacher, because I used to, anything I learned, I wanted to teach the younger kids or, you know, just as the thing I did. But I kind of had inside myself as a more masculine, patriarchal worldview, which I didn't even know I had in a certain sense. No, you've got to be a

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a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, a change agent, you know, a scientist. You got to be doing these big changing things in the world, which at the same time I was rejecting. So it was a kind of confusing thing. And ultimately, when I came back to teaching, and I realized this is actually what I love to do. So that's a bit of a complicated, you know, I don't have a simple response to your question. It's a good question. It makes sense, though, because I think.

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I think there's a lot of people that would relate with bucking the system, if you will, or we feel like we are, because I don't want to be like that person, but yet I want their approval at the same time, and I'm going to be doing these things. I think there's something to that. For me, when my mom died when I was a kid, and everything that I did was out of fear of abandonment. And so it was...

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performative, right? Like I had to succeed at whatever I did. And so I always chose the easy route because I knew I would be good at it. And then I would get the approval. No one would leave me again because my eight-year-old brain, my mom abandoned me. She died, but my eight-year-old brain sees that as maybe I did something that made her leave. If I do something again, they're going to leave. And so.

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To me, it's interesting because that's how I performed based on what I thought everyone's expectation was of me. But it wasn't. No one cared. And so it's interesting to hear how you were like, no, but yes. No, but yes. And then you come back to it. It's an interesting journey. And I think for people like me, when I said lucky or that I'm jealous, it's because I wish that I had.

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that approach when I was younger to do all these things and take chances and take risks. It sounds like you did a lot of that, but then came back to a place that fit in a little bit more of a mold. Right. Now, I did and I'll speak to that, but I'll just say it seems like right now that's this choice for you to do this podcast and the things that you're doing now in your life. It does seem like that's the opportunity we have.

15:25
as adults, in a way, if we're doing our work, is to do some of that healing of the younger self that is driving us in certain ways. For me, going back into school and in psychology, developmental psychology, becoming a psychologist, like really studying how, in this case, women develop, but going into the academic system, being in a university, it was like the thing I would never do. I was just never going to do that.

15:53
And doing that in a certain way, finding my own ground in that system. And I've always been, actually, I would say I'm an edge person, I'm a radical. I'm out on the edge. I'm not in the mainstream, even in psychology. I would say I'm more, my work has been with trauma and trauma, and it was before my own trauma traumatic thing happened, event happened, working with developmental trauma, which is what you're speaking to.

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those younger parts of us that had to be healed. But you know what's something, apparently when I was born, and I only found this out actually many years after my mother had passed away, and I was doing a woman's circle for my niece who was getting married, and so they let me do the swimming. They didn't know what, you know, so it meant I had my aunts there and the people that didn't really know what I did.

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for work, which was work with women. So I did this sort of women's circle fairly well balance so it wasn't too wild for them. And at some point, one of my cousins said, and my older aunt, my aunt was there, was my mother's sister, said, this is so amazing that you're doing this given what happened when you were born. And I'm like, well, what do you mean? And...

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And then she looked over and gave this sort of weird look to her mother. And her mother looked at her with a stern gaze. So I knew there was something, but I was facilitating the circles. I couldn't really do anything in the moment. I just said, you know, moved on to something else and then asked her afterwards, you know, what were you talking about? And what I found out was that according to my aunt, when I was born, I was the second girl in the family. So we already had an older sister 18 months older than me.

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and my father wanted a boy and he wanted a boy so much that when I was born apparently he didn't talk to my mother for 10 days. Now I don't know if that's true or not but that's huge trauma for a little being like you said for your eight-year-old self. I remember at one point saying to my therapist something about telling her this story and I said well this is nothing like you know really being abused when you're younger and you know or losing your your parent and

18:14
She said, no, in some cases I might say it's even worse because you're so pre-verbal and you are reading your mother's body, which is, you know, and the sorrow she's going through. So you're trying to attach and your mother can't fully attach and your father won't attach. So it's very interesting that the work I ended up doing and do is about women and belonging.

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in this world because that's what I do. And with David, I had sort of rested into this incredible sense of belonging with another for really beyond my mother for the first time. That's a fascinating story to find out later in life, right? And then draw those connections. Very much so. Because I didn't realize, you know, with my whole thought of an eight-year-old, I didn't realize that until my 30s when I had a therapist to also go, hey.

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you know what you're doing or you know what you've been doing since that moment. And it's fascinating. But yeah, I can I can see how that child also to like if your mother was harboring that for a long time to like keeping that inside, you can feed off of that as well subconsciously and not just as a baby, but even just growing up, if that was, you know, actually happened, it's it's interesting to hear and it's interesting to hear your story. Those formative years and kind of

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how you made decisions and then came back to it. And then you're like, I've always been on the edge. But it also sounds like you can play within the lines, or you can at least be in that space comfortably as well. It's like, I know how to tow the line, but also I can play if I need to. Is that true? I think that's very, very intuitive. I would say I am a bridge person. I really do. And that was part of deciding to go and get the academic credentials I needed. I want to be able to be.

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the changes I would say I'd like to be a part of, that I like to think I'm a part of in the world right now, are in the world. And I don't want to be over in some, you know, lala land over here. So I do like to be able to be in the world, but bringing something new. Right, like poking the bear in like a very general term. You know, like let's go a little bit farther. Let's you know, like let's go to get a little bit there. So let's bring you back to...

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to this. I think that's a good understanding that I have, though, of this kind of this journey that you took into finding home, finding a place where professionally you felt like you fit, you felt that there was success happening, whatever success means to you. But it's like some... Absolutely. You felt like you were checking your own boxes instead of other people's boxes. Like, wow, you're making a difference. And then you find your husband, David...

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who was always in your notebooks as a child, you know, and you find him and find this, this relationship in which everything felt right. And then, I mean, you alluded to a traumatic experience, a cataclysmic experience in your life. So maybe you can share a little bit about that. So I think I'll just say that maybe I'll just, we'll just cut to the chase and then I'll back up a bit. So David died by suicide.

21:35
And this was two days before the wedding was about to happen. So all the family was here from Indonesia. It was five days before I was about to launch my first program with women that it's after a year off of writing, being out of face-to-face contact. So there were a lot of things about, there would be no indication, let me just say, that somebody, that he was going to do this.

22:05
I also need to say he wasn't in the years that I was with him, which was 10 years, he wasn't a depressed man, but he had in his past, that was in his younger years, he had some of that and he had even considered suicide apparently as he spoke about it in his younger years. But it was very much a thing of the past, not the present. And about three months before he died, he started.

22:34
got tinnitus. The sort of cacophony, the sound can take all sorts of forms depending on what you have, but there's no known cure for it right now. So you basically have to learn to live with it, which many, many people do. It can be caused by, well, it could just be caused by random things like aging, but it can also be from loud music when you were younger, traumatic events. I mean, I don't really know what causes it. Anyway, he had that.

23:02
and he died in January and he started to have tinnitus in October. So that was really unbearable for him. He had a deep meditation practice and would like to get into these non-dual states of bliss and he could not get there. He could not sleep very well, so that was going on. Then I would also soon discover once the castle came down, so to speak, that

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his own business was about to come tumbling down. So we had two very separate businesses. I had my women in leadership work and he had his Indonesian furniture business. And he was way out in that in many, many directions. And in a way, he was sort of living as he'd like to think of himself as a kind of...

24:00
how it would it means to be spiritual in the material world. People saw him that way, he'd like to see himself that way, that, look, you can live with a spiritual view and then we have this enormous, huge estate and very magical place. But in fact, it was just rotting underneath. And I think there was, I know, there was a lot of shame for him in what was about to happen, in what was happening. And he did not have the strength to face that.

24:29
very sorry for your loss and sorry that perfect life that you were feeling, I don't know, perfect's the right word, but that place where you don't even think about it because it feels so good kind of life that you were leading, basically you described like, you said like an iceberg, right? It's gone, your future, what you imagined out ahead is just gone. And then earlier you called it a cliff. For me it was like a cliff, absolutely. It was a cliff because I lost the

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him, or what was the future we imagined together. Of course, there's always that sort of that you lose in this, but we all did who were close to him. But if it's your partner, that's a different kind of future you see with someone. And then, and then I had to very quickly sell our estate because the debt that he had, that he had was much larger than even the asset of this multi-million dollar

25:29
shock? Whoa, because all my resources were in the property. I had sold my house. I'd put them, you know, there was just an enormous amount of trust I had in David and in us and in the future, and some of that very naive. And I have, obviously, that was a big wake up for me and learning for me. But I would say that the house, the property, unfortunately, could sell it and did sell it. Very, then six months I was gone, left my community.

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left, closed down my business. I had two business partners. Just like everything. Do you know, I have used this analogy of the Tibetan sand paintings. Have you ever seen those where they do these incredible mandalas where they blow little bits of sand and create these little grains of sand? Have you ever seen this? I don't think so. I want to now. It's a Tibetan Buddhist. Yeah, there are videos online you can find, but it's a Tibetan Buddhist.

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ritual really where over days monks sit and create these elaborate mandalas by Blowing little grains of sand like one grain sort of at a time over this incredible thing and then when it's done and it's taken They do it 24 hours a day. So monks rotate. It's like a ritual process and then when it's done, they just Don't tell me take yeah, it was like they just like wipe it off And it was like everything in my life everything was so beautiful

26:58
And it was just gone in a ridiculously fast period of time. And I can imagine what the steamroller feeling from a couple different angles, right, as this wife. I'm assuming there's feelings of like, how did this happen? Like, how did I, like, did I see this? Then you have the brain of a psychologist. You know, you have this psychology background, right? You have all this.

27:27
study, research, you have this understanding. So now that's playing into like, I have all this academic background, I have all this understanding, but then this happened. And then how did I not know about this piece? What in your head, how did you put those things back together so that you could function as a human again, and feel, you know, with all those different pieces that were kind of attacked from different angles? Eyes.

27:56
I would say I functioned as a human all the way along. I don't know that I, I think partly because I was certainly a traumatized human to start with, but because of the work I did, not only what I knew and understood and ultimately came, it was in my first book, but what I lived also had somewhat embodied what I, this way of being, I'd say of being in the world. And I knew for sure.

28:25
I was going to live that way of being. Now, if it would work, I didn't know, would that get me through this way of being in the world where I'm true to myself and connected to others and able to move with the, be with all the feelings that were going on and hold the complexity. The work I was actually doing and still do is about helping grow complexity. That's what development is. Development is you can hold more. So I actually...

28:54
what I think you're speaking to, and I grew more capacity. I already was pretty equipped at some levels, but I didn't go in it with my manual. This is my first book. I didn't even have the book. It wasn't even published yet, but I didn't have the manual. Okay, now what do I do? I literally was living as I had installed in myself. Whatever ways of being I knew, they were there.

29:24
And then in that living, I really and truly did grow much more capacity. I mean, this is the second book is titled, You Make Your Path by Walking, really, which is pointing to you make your path. This was an unfolding for me. And I wasn't really 100% sure that I wouldn't end up under the bridge in a cardboard box or psychologically.

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shattered into too many pieces to come back together. But I did know with a kind of certainty that I would live this particular, I would live this truly the way that the best that I could live it. I don't think that that is that common. You know, I think that you, the reason I asked that I think there's, I think there's a lot of people, there's a very large percentage of people that don't have the tools they don't have. Absolutely.

30:24
the confidence in themselves, they don't have the understanding of how to move forward, how to take that next step. It sounds like your background and the things that you had done in your life allowed you to really... This is still life. This is just a different one than I imagined. We're going to do with it what we can now.

30:47
Yeah, that's beautiful. That's exactly right. But that's hard. No, it's so hard. I know. Because the denial is, which is basically when you don't do that, which is an essential first step in any shocking loss. I'm all for denial because it basically is the pre-formal cortex saying, well, I'm overwhelmed. We're just going offline here because the nervous system can't take it all. But I also knew that I couldn't hang out there if I could, if I, that there was going to be a lot of suffering.

31:15
was going to be, I was already suffering, and the Buddhist expression is, there's suffering, and then there's suffering, the suffering. And I already had, I knew there was going to be enormous suffering, and the more, the suffering of the suffering is when you resist what is. And it was something for me to, this was a daily practice, to just keep saying to myself, this is not, there's nowhere I'm going to.

31:44
that is anything like where I have come from. Because sometimes you go through something like this and you think, I'm just gotta get back, just let me get back to some, to the normal or what was. And there was an event I wrote about in the book that it's probably worth just sharing it because it's so graphic. One of the things that I knew to do and do and teach women to do basically is work with ritual. And the reason...

32:14
we use ritual, we do it in our ordinary lives, and we all do, certain kinds of ritual, is because it incorporates or speaks to the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. That's the beauty. Indigenous cultures know that it's really important to use ritual in big moments in a life, but we've lost some of that in our Western world. But anyway, I did a lot of ritual and because I knew most of the time.

32:42
I was going to have to pick up a lot of pieces of the unconscious parts of me that I would never be able to get to with my conscious mind. One of them was to gather all the close-in friends and family about two weeks after David died. I had a friend hold that facilitated this. We all gathered in my living room in front of this. This was a time, basically, for people to come and say what they were feeling, to speak

33:11
to be congruent basically, because there was a lot of grief and anger and fear and just the whole range of feelings. And often, especially around a suicide, those are privately, you know, you go away by yourself and do it. Anyway, I had this beautiful vessel that David was a collector of rare Asian ceramics. And this one was one of those beautiful.

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vessels. And at a certain point right at the beginning, I had a friend of mine who does the shamanic rattles, if you've ever heard those. It's intense rattling. And she rattled, rattled, rattled. And when it sort of hit the peak moment, I took this vessel and I just smashed it on the stone hearth. And it went into just a bajillion pieces. And the whole room went kuch!

34:09
my body did. It was like the message to my body, and I think others felt this too, that there would be no putting back together this thing. Like for me there was no where I was going. There was no there there to go back to. And the more that I could really accept that, and that was a critical moment for me of really getting it in my body, then I could

34:37
This was my life. I wasn't going to get this moment back or this day back. They're gone. So how can I live this with the hope that if I live it so fully, heartfully, all of me, that I might find myself somewhere beautiful again. But I didn't know that that would be true. But you had the hope or you had the belief?

35:06
the belief that it could be true, I think is helpful. Yeah, and I think there's.

35:14
I just, I don't know. I mean, I was so young in my first trauma, I guess, in my first experience that nobody around me had the tools to give me to perform that. And you know, I think a product of my, you know, my grandparents and my father also didn't have that in generations and I think, you know, it's just wasn't what the world was talking about. Like you said, you...

35:43
push those ones to the side and you're performative and you do what the world expects of you and perform in that way. And even to the point, like I was the closest with my dad's mother, who was like best friends with my mom. And to the point when I watched her take her last breath, to that point, she had never grieved the loss of my mother. And that had been like 20 something years at that point. And so I commend you. The reason I say that is like,

36:13
all the people around me didn't have any of those tools and would have absolutely not done what you've done. What you did in that moment is look around you and know like, this is still my life. I need to do something moving forward with it. I can't go back because there's not anything to go back to. So I mean, kudos to you for living in your truth. Yeah. And letting myself, I mean, the breaking open.

36:42
so complete for me in some, I mean, I hope I never have to go through anything like this again, but it was almost like something, my identity, every level of my identity got shattered. I was doing this great work in the school, I was about to launch a program identity, the author identity, the wife identity, the, you know, the steward of this incredible estate identity.

37:12
And I will say that something in the nakedness of that...

37:19
If someone's right in the middle of this right now listening, you might relate to this, or if you can recall it, there's something in that naked vulnerability in the moment when you can let yourself be broken open that actually you touch something so... You touch love. You are love. It is all there is. That is true. That was my lived experience. It was an idea.

37:48
before. I can't say I'm living with that liminal, you know, the aliveness that happened to then. That was just so, it was like there was a river and the river was love. And interestingly, David was actually a very loving being, very loving. That's why this, you know, in some levels will never make enough, you know, full sense to me, although he did write a note, so I have some understanding. But...

38:17
He was so loving. And then when this happened, it's almost like the cosmic egg got cracked and there was just all this love present. And all the people that came in around me, which I was, that's essential. That would be like, even if you have one good friend who can be that, you know, if someone's going through loss right now, but there's a kind of field that you can be in when you're that shattered.

38:45
And you can tune yourself like a tuning fork, literally, to the vibration of love. When everything else is... When it seems like you've... When you've lost the greatest love. But that love is... Yeah, the person is gone. And that you have to reckon with in a million ways. And that's a journey. But that love was available for me. It makes sense.

39:13
in the sense, you know, you mentioned the tinnitus and how that was starting to change him in a way, right? He wasn't able to be probably internally the way that he wanted to be and perform in that way. And maybe, I'm not gonna, I shouldn't go down this road, but I'm just thinking that maybe it was like, I don't want to not be this person because I want to continue exuding this love and creating this space. And that was the...

39:41
that was the space that he was in. And so by cracking this open and leaving the love behind, I can kind of feel how that would make sense in my mind. But obviously I can't empathize because I don't understand. Right, and you think of how what was there for him had he had just one little bit more courage, you could say, or to stay.

40:10
to stay in, that this world would have come up around him, around both of us. I like to imagine that, you know, that he would have grown and changed, I would have grown and changed. We both would have become, you know, more whole. But as it was, that was not what he did. And that was then my path to walk. Wondering, you know, you said that you've

40:38
you know, when this event happened, you had this awareness, you had the ability, you had the version of you that could walk forward and be vulnerable and open this space and figure out what's next. Do you, if looking back at the version of you before this tragedy, do you see differences in you and how you operate or...

41:05
how you see things, is there a difference? Or were you kind of, are you just building upon what was already there?

41:14
Um...

41:17
I think, well, there has been a building for sure, I'd say. I did build upon what was there, but I would also say... Feels like your garden's just getting bigger. My garden is getting bigger, but also I... The self...

41:35
who this happened to at the beginning was not the self that could forgive David, let's say. So I had to, that self took time and I let it take time because I did not want to do what's sometimes called a spiritual bypass, which is basically you just avoid feeling anything in your body and make it all, it's all meant to be and it's all good and it's all meant to be and he's in a better place and he's fine, he's not suffering. He's like, no, he left an enormous mess behind.

42:04
and I had to walk through that mess to try to create a life for myself and stabilize everything and to all the other people that were around. And so eventually that self could, it did arise, the self that was large enough to forgive him. So I can't say that self initially was there. I'd also say there was some self, you know, there was a way, a shattering of

42:36
I would have never said I believed this, but the sense of bad things don't happen to good people. I don't think I believed that to be true. But then when this happened, it was like, wow! What did I do? Right, or I don't even think I went to what did I do. It was more, things happen in lives and it's not about being bad or good. This is just, maybe it's karma. I know you could say, past life, what did I do?

43:04
I don't know what to make of that yet fully, but I can say things happen in a life and sometimes it's helpful. And of course, anyone who experiences a suicide cannot help but wonder what you might have done. What did you miss? Why didn't you see this? Why didn't you do that? Or where did you see? But I was very deliberate from a very early stage to not take this on as my suicide. It was not my suicide. It was David's suicide.

43:34
And that choice was really important to make again and again and again. You know, that I don't... And what is true is that if somebody is ready to leave, that is their free will, they can do it if they, you know, we know we have that ability. That choice, you know, the choice to be here was the choice I was making and that was the choice I had to just keep making again and again. Like I'm in this embodied life.

44:04
I think that is way more than a lot of people would do. I think that myself personally, if I face that, I would almost thank the fact that there was a mess to clean up because that's how I would get my distraction and that's how I would move through it because I would feel, oh, I gotta clean this up. This is how I can avoid my feelings right now and I can avoid this sadness and all this stuff because there's a lot to

44:34
clean up? Did any part of you kind of thrive in that? I mean, it was obviously a devastation of a lot of things and your entire world was kind of shattered or was shattered, not even kind of shattered. But was there a piece of you that was like, I have things to do, like this has to get done. And that was kind of a helpful process for you? Or is that just me? I think so. I know I will actually think and in fact, I would say to somebody going through something like that.

45:03
The title of my new book is You Make Your Path by Walking. There is something to movement. Movement is actually really important. That doesn't mean there aren't times to be still. I did know that the waves of emotion would come and I wanted and I was able to be with those when they would come. Like I did need to ride those waves and sometimes they were totally, they were huge waves and they just took me, tumbled me around

45:33
surf and sometimes, you know, and over time that shifts a little bit. But in some ways the requirement to be, I mean, available for things so quickly was extremely hard because in shock and trauma, as I said, your prefrontal cortex is offline and I had to get it back online faster than I would even recommend for somebody. But it also meant I had to bring people in around me to...

46:03
to help me hold some of those pieces. And I do think there is a value, whether, I mean, it's not necessarily a distraction to do the things that have to be done. There's a way in which your energy gets to move because our little nervous systems, and certainly mine, couldn't take on the overwhelm of the feelings all at once. And I do think it was probably helpful that I had things I had to do.

46:34
And so this new book that you released in June 2023, is this shaped from this specific experience? Or how did this book come about? Well, the first book that I mentioned was ready to come out, or the first draft was written. That I took a couple of years to get back to and complete, and that came out in 2016. That was a huge step just to do that. And actually one...

47:03
different awards and it's done really well. That was its own little enormous accomplishment and the idea of this book was just like nowhere on the radar. I was just wanting to live this and not be the the transformational teacher writing about it because I wasn't sure yet I was how I was getting all the way through. I was still making my path by walking you know so I and as I said already I was really committed to doing that authentically whatever that would mean.

47:33
So about maybe four years ago now, five years ago, I realized I needed to write myself back into that time because those initial traumas, it took me a long time to go back to the initial trauma of finding David and all of the events around that experience. And I did it with a therapist a couple of years after the event. We've learned when trauma works.

48:02
You don't ideally go right back to the trauma. Sometimes that can be re-traumatizing. You just let your nervous system get enough ground under you. So when I had enough ground, I was ready to write it. And I rented a, I didn't rent, actually, my friend gave me their little beautiful cottage up in the San Juan Islands. And I went there for a week at a time, and I would just drop in to writing, just write.

48:31
And right until it was overwhelming, I put my computer away and go and walk on the beach and have a good cry or a good whatever. And I had friends standing by that I could call if I got overwhelmed with anything. That I just really took the time to go bring the me of then together with the me that was going through that first year especially.

48:58
After I'd written them, that took a couple of years. I'd take these little breaks and go and do that. And then I showed it to the editor of my first book and just said, I just want you to read this and see what you think. And she said, okay, you have got to get this into a book that this will be so helpful to other people going through trauma and loss. And well, these times that are

49:28
And then I thought, all right, I'll do that. I'll shape it into a book. So that's what I did. I then took the pieces and decided to go with the same publisher from the first book. And so the first book is really a lot of the research we did and the theory and case studies of all women. So it's not my story. And this is a memoir. This is my story. But it's also a guidebook. So it's kind of.

49:58
giving some, I call it a transformational field guide through trauma and loss. But it's not like a guide, here you do this. It's more like, here's some things to watch for on the path. Things to consider. And the book is probably even better because you did not write necessarily with the purpose of writing a book, but rather a purpose to heal you and to examine things and to get it out.

50:27
and just put it down over that time period, because I feel like sometimes if you went in the other way, you'd probably, maybe not you. Other people might be a little bit more contrived in a sense of like, here are my buckets. No, this is very, it's very raw and vulnerable that way. Yeah, and I think that's important. And sometimes I think if we go in, if we're not doing it in a way that's serving us best,

50:56
in the healing sense first, I think it might not be as valuable. And so I commend you for doing that and then putting it out into the world so that other people can relate to your story. And like you said, it's not like a manual to grieve after trauma or to go through trauma or whatever, but rather a guide.

51:22
of things to consider. Here's what happened to me. Here's how I can do it. Here's some research that I probably that I brought in to help other people. I think it's going to be so valuable. It's kind of, you know, not to minimize either one. But the reason I have this podcast is because I want each episode to find the one person that needed to hear the story because they felt like they were the only person going through it. And so I think your book is going to do that for many people.

51:48
Yeah, and I thank you. And I think the life shift, what you do here, is so aligned with what I would like the book to be, which is the idea and the lived experience for me of, I mean, we don't want these big shaking up, breaking up moments in our lives, but it is part of, as you say, the human journey. And so...

52:14
how we are with those, how we live with them, and how we make our path. That's everything to do with who we become and how we end up, and then how we are a transmission in the world for more of our authentic, loving essence, let's say. So it's quite different than just how do you survive, how do you just survive a trauma like this? You do want to survive, but I'm suggesting.

52:43
there's a possibility for growth, for development, for really and truly going somewhere new that you won't know until you're on that new ground. And even then, you know, it's kind of like you've been out on sea and doing all of this, and then all of a sudden your boat hits an island and you kind of go, oh, where am I now?

53:11
I think I might be somewhere new. And then you discover, here's where I am. Oh, this is this new land I'm on now. I agree with that. Our journeys certainly make us who we are. And so much of my life before I really went into therapy and whatnot, I was always like, if only that didn't happen to me, who would I be? And that doesn't serve me anymore.

53:41
What serves me now is that I am grateful for the things that I've experienced, good and bad, because of that experience. I'm grateful for who I am and what I can do now, even though I did it terribly wrong for 30-something years, because I didn't have any tools. I didn't have it. But I think maybe that was my journey of learning and finding this version of Matt that can.

54:08
do something like the Life Shift podcast that can talk to people like you and have real conversations that I wish everyone would be comfortable talking about. So I agree with you and just there is a future. Right. And I think there's something about, I don't know if you find this, but I do, that the fact that you have this podcast and you speak about this with people keeps you in the flow. This is the work I do in the world. I do the work of...

54:37
of helping women kind of midwife the next level of themselves. And there's no way that doesn't happen with some shaking up that's usually already going on for people. But every time I teach a class or I, you know, give it, I'm reminded too that keeps me on the path. Because this is the path we're on. And you can be choosing what path you're on. But you already, you've just sent a message out into the world that you're on a life shift path.

55:06
So it keeps you on it and I'm on a you make your path by walking path, which is unfolding the emergent, you know, like who we are becoming can actually happen if we give ourselves room to be in the mystery, to let things unfold.

55:25
I agree. I agree. I think, you know, you kind of pointed this out early on that this podcast is serving that eight-year-old version of me in selfish ways, you know, that this is the thing that that eight-year-old needed to hear. I don't know that he would listen to podcasts, but he needed to know that other people had dead parents and they were going to be okay, too. And, you know, that's unfortunately part of life for a lot of people.

55:54
But that eight-year-old thought he was the only one. He was the only person that could ever understand what that felt like, because I didn't have the tools. I didn't have something like this podcast. I didn't have a book that other people are sharing their experiences. So I commend you for what you're doing. I'm certainly proud of what I'm trying to do with this podcast. And we're serving other people, and hopefully in good ways. So I appreciate you sharing your story here and being a part of this.

56:24
Thank you, Matt, for bringing me into the conversation here. I've really enjoyed the, I've actually enjoyed the refreshing ways that you are, you know, inquiring and not the typical, as you already, I know this is how you brand your podcast, but not the typical questions. So it was great to answer those questions and go somewhere new. And I'm wondering if this version of you right now, if you could go back to.

56:52
the Suzanne that was really feeling home. Everything was like working in the way that you imagined things ramping up in your professional career. Your life was, your marriage was good and all these things were happening. Is there anything that you could say to her knowing what you know now that you think would serve her well?

57:17
I think I'd say, and I have done some of this, going back to that self then, but in this moment I'd say it has something, it would have to do with, you've been preparing your whole life for something that's going to come now, and it's going to take you somewhere darker and harder than you've ever...

57:47
been before. And you do know how to be in the dark. You're going to be okay. And let the breaking open be the breaking through. You're ready. You're equipped.

58:07
And you can, and there's something about just trust, trust that as you keep moving, the path will rise up under you. Have that, just have faith. Have just 2% more faith than you think you have and that you even could possibly have in that moment. Just 2% more faith to take that hard next step into what is going to come and it's going to be very, very dark, a big dark void.

58:36
I mean, from your story, it sounded like you were unfortunately, but fortunately prepared, you know, in the sense of knowing yourself and knowing and having the trust in your abilities and in your heart and soul into what you could do. And I think that's super, super fortunate, I think. And it's inspiring to see that if we have enough trust in ourselves and we feel

59:06
We feel whole. We are able to conquer a lot more than we ever even imagined. And so thank you again for sharing this story. Certainly we'll share the links to your books and how to contact you and connect with you if you would like for listeners to connect with you and see the work that you're doing and just be part of your community. Yeah. So thank you for that. All right, and if you are listening.

59:32
and you enjoy this podcast or you enjoy other podcasts, just leave us a rating and review. And we're so ever thankful. And we will be back next week with a brand new episode of the Life Shift podcast. Thanks Suzanne. Thanks Matt.

59:58
For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com